I Can't Even Begin To Describe The Wrongness

Police gaffe makes Muslims pray in wrong direction

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Police gaffe makes Muslims pray in wrong direction Fri Apr 13, 8:40 AM ET



A Dutch police station trying to help Muslim detainees face Mecca for their prayers painted arrows in cells pointing in the wrong direction.

The Segbroek police station in The Hague borrowed the idea of putting compass marks on ceilings from an Amsterdam hotel, the Dutch daily De Telegraaf reported on Friday.

Muslims pray five times a day, facing east in the direction of Mecca. But the arrows in Segbroek pointed west.

"This is a really gigantic, stupid blunder," a police spokesman told the De Telegraaf.

"The faulty compass marks have been immediately corrected. It is a mystery for us how this could have possibly happened."

All other police cells in the Dutch capital will soon get similar compass marks, the in-house newspaper of The Hague police said.

The Netherlands is home to 1 million Muslims out of a population of more than 16 million.

Immigration and the integration of newcomers have been hot topics since the rise and murder of populist politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002, who said the country could not absorb any more foreigners.

So, Then ... An introduction, Part 1

I think an introduction to some new people is in order at this point, since my f'list has doubled over this last week and a lot of the new people only really know me from the three, four days we were in Chester together during Eastercon.

So, well, here goes.

The name "Fiat Knox" is a nom de plume. I was originally going to call myself "Fiat Nox", but someone had already registered that Yahoo label, so I added the silent k - I actually borrowed it from the end of "magick", so some hapless occultist is wandering around somewhere with a missing silent "k" in his head, and of course he will never know where it went ...

"Fiat Nox" is the term Peter J Carroll used for his Chaos Magic Theory hypothesis by which he supposes the universe could have come into existence, coalescing and condensing out of the raw chaos and into the form we presently inhabit and observe, rather than following some script borrowed out of Genesis and coming into being as a big explosion of light ex nihilo.

With the Special K, I adopted the surname Knox in honour of the journalist character in the 1989 Batman movie, just so I could pinch the quote from Billy Dee Williams' character, who tells him in one scene:

"Mr. Knox, I think we have enough real problems in this city without worrying about ghosts and goblins ..."

Current Activities for the Weekend

There's only a few minutes left online here, before I have to log off for the weekend.

Here's my current list of activities, for what it's worth.

- fiat_knox_com wasn't my only inspiration at Eastercon. I also came up with new material to weave into The Fourth Rewrite. Chapter Seven is on the way.

One small spoiler, for future reference. Watch for the crossdressing cat.

- Short Story News 1: That flash fiction is being typed up as I speak. I'll have it done very soon, and post it up here or at fiat_knox_com.

- Short Story News 2: Nick dropped by a few nights back, and we discussed flash fiction. We challenged one another to come up with some sort of fiction. We chose the theme of erotica. Nick came up with an idea to try and blend together the genres of detective fic and erotica. Watch for this, too.

Okay, time to get going. Have fun weekends, folks. Love you all.